i think the energy coming out of the wall street protesters is always a good thing. when people nonviolently speak out and stand for something, it s good to challenge authority when they do that. do you think they want reform or do they want structural change? the kind of stuff i grew up with and you grew up, which is a real argument about what kind of a system, kind of system we have in this country. is this for structural change, radical change, like the way profits go to different corporations or the way people get jobs? is it systemic? or do they just want things fixed a little? i m curious. what do you think? i don t think they want minor reforms. you remember during the banking bill. the brown/kaufman amendment would have said, it would have basically said those banks that have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, the biggest six banks in the country should have been broken up into smaller banks. it would have, instead of the power again occurring at the top, we saw what happ
any candidate who can speak to some of those legitimate frustration we see from some of the members of the tea party, and with the notion that government has gotten so big, it s become unresponsive, are going to do well. what i think is hard to explain is why these republicans who are washington insiders, like dan coats, who is the ultimate washington insider, he s been a senator, a lobbyist and an ambassador to germany, how candidates like that are doing well in this environment is hard to figure out. matt, what do you make of that? the first reason is dan coats was conservative champion in the united states senate and dan burton and mark satter and some of these other incumbents are conservative champions as well. the tea party movement is about ideas. when republicans stand up against obama care and against this terrible banking bill, it makes a big impact. let me say one thing, out in
of bipartisanship that we have not seen in the past 18 months and that we don t necessarily see on the horizon beyond the banking bill. it is there s opportunity for this, but unless there s a way they can move forward and actually start working across the aisle, i think it s very hard to have any meaningful reform that is pushed for and that is championed by republicans. yet, a challenge for president obama, managing so much government expansion that he has to still be talking about a way the economy is improving, how they re creating jobs over the next two years rather than looking backward and looking for the villains on wall street. right. part of it is our economy is growing. it s growing at a very rapid rate. a lot of that is stimulus fueled. we don t know how much is stimulus and how much is real. we re coming off an earnings season where companies grew revenue for the first time since the crisis began. that may sound sort of wall street to people. but that s what americ
and that we don t necessarily see on the horizon beyond the banking bill. it is there s opportunity for this, but unless there s a way they can move forward and actually start working across the aisle, i think it s very hard to have any meaningful reform that is pushed for and that is championed by republicans. yet, a challenge for president obama, managing so much government expansion that he has to still be talking about a way the economy is improving, how they re creating jobs over the next two years rather than looking backward and looking for the villains on wall street. right. part of it is our economy is growing. it s growing at a very rapid rate. a lot of that is stimulus fueled. we don t know how much is stimulus and how much is real. we re coming off an earnings season where companies grew revenue for the first time since the crisis began. that may sound sort of wall street to people. but that s what america is about. if you re selling more things, revenue is going up
thinking out there. is that going to win out in terms of how republicans oppose the administration? you talk about this being a challenge for republicans. for many people, they see this as an opportunity for republicans because as david said, it actually motivates the people that are on the far right. it s possible for them to do this. in order for them to to talk about reform, as long as a democrat is sitting in the white house, there has to be the kind of bipartisanship that we have not seen in the past 18 months and that we don t necessarily see on the horizon beyond the banking bill. it is there s opportunity for this, but unless there s a way they can move forward and actually start working across the aisle, i think it s very hard to have any meaningful reform that is pushed for and that is championed by republicans. yet, a challenge for president obama, managing so much government expansion that he has to still be talking about a way the economy is improving, how they re